BUSTED: Tol takes on Cook’s ‘97% consensus’ claim with a re-analysis, showing the claim is ‘unfounded’

A new paper by Dr. Richard Tol published today in ScienceDirect, journal of Energy Policy, shows that the Cook et al. paper claiming that there is a 97% consensus among scientists is not just impossible to reproduce (since Cook is withholding data) but a veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias, classification errors, poor data quality, and inconsistency in the ratings process. The full paper is available below.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis

A claim has been that 97% of the scientific literature endorses anthropogenic climate change (Cook et al., 2013. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024). This claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook׳s validation test shows that the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested.

Conclusion and policy implications

The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded. There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct. Cook et al., however, failed to demonstrate this. Instead, they gave further cause to those who believe that climate researchers are secretive (as data were held back) and incompetent (as the analysis is flawed).

It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration. During that time, electoral fortunes will turn. Climate policy will not succeed unless it has broad societal support, at levels comparable to other public policies such as universal education or old-age support. Well-publicized but faulty analyses like the one by Cook et al. only help to further polarize the climate debate.

Can we get you on record, Anthony, endorsing the math behind it? I know that posting it here is an implicit endorsement of Tol’s mangled effort, but could you step up and say outright how impressed you are? Please?

You are going to be embarrassed for having highlighted this. But that’s ok. Nothing we haven’t seen you do many times before.

By the way, Anthony, those extra ~ 300 papers Tol “found” rejecting the consensus. Care to point us to a few?

REPLY: Here’s the thing, I don’t deal with punks that demand that I do specific things who are too timid to use their own names. Bug off – Anthony

Latitude says:
June 4, 2014 at 3:12 pm
There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans…

really?

Of course. The funding for research overwhelmingly supports research that supports the hypothesis, so the literature that flows from said funding will also support the hypothesis. It is just like tobacco in the 1950’s. The funding was all in support of tobacco being harmless, so that is what the research showed. If you show otherwise, you don’t get any more funding. Climate research today is at about the same place that tobacco research was about 1960. The dollars being thrown at it are huge compared to the tobacco scam, so it will take more than a surgeon general’s report to begin a shift.

“A new paper by Dr. Richard Tol published today in ScienceDirect … shows that the Cook et al. paper claiming that there is a 97% consensus among scientists is not just impossible to reproduce… but a veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias, classification errors, poor data quality, and inconsistency in the ratings process.”

(B) However, I hope Dr. Tol himself, despite risking funding hits, will eventually stop implying a need to cut emissions drastically and thus ruinously and eventually genocidally, given that the Jesus paper has finally arrived that actually measured the overall greenhouse effect with physical feedbacks and found it to be miniscule despite high theoretical forcing and supercomputer model positive feedbacks:

“Tiny warming of residual anthropogenic CO2”

Abstract: “The residual fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions which has not been captured by carbon sinks and remains in the atmosphere, is estimated by two independent experimental methods which support each other: the 13C/12C ratio and the temperature-independent fraction of d(CO2)/dt on a yearly scale after subtraction of annual fluctuations the amplitude ratio of which reaches a factor as large as 7. The anthropogenic fraction is then used to evaluate the additional warming by analysis of its spectral contribution to the outgoing long-wavelength radiation (OLR) measured by infrared spectrometers embarked in satellites looking down. The anthropogenic CO2 additional warming extrapolated in 2100 is found lower than 0.1°C in the absence of feedbacks. The global temperature data are fitted with an oscillation of period 60 years added to a linear contribution. The data which support the 60-year cycle are summarized, in particular sea surface temperatures and sea level rise measured either by tide gauge or by satellite altimetry. The tiny anthropogenic warming appears consistent with the absence of any detectable change of slope of the 130-year-long linear contribution to the temperature data before and after the onset of large CO2 emissions.”

In this case it’s delightfully devilish for Dr. Tol to toe the line completely, to have maximum impact *within* climate science, helping to reform it, and Dr. Tol is after all not a physical scientist but a econometrician who is an expert on applying statistics, mathematics and computational methods in economic theory. So he may not have experienced the sense of jaw dropping shock I did when as an experienced laboratory researcher I started reading the output of climate “science” and noticed that no, they were simply not following the scientific method of tasking themselves with rooting out errors in their own work, at all, nor in their peer review of papers.

(C) When Dr. Tol asserts, “I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct.” then I must point out that the scam nature of IPCC level “science” revolves around a hockey stick team that to this day is ramping *up* the brazenness of the fraud rather than cleaning house since, really, they are themselves the only housekeepers so far, and their Soviet worthy lies now stand fully exposed as of their latest 2013 “super hockey stick”:

After recognizing this undeniable headline grabbing scam, I cannot take at face value his statement of having little reason to doubt a consensus, for any school child may now be savvy to the manipulated nature *of* that consensus, just looking at Willis Eschenbach’s plot of the Marcott 2013 input data. Here Dr. Tol is, after all, quite ironically claiming he has no reason to doubt the 97% consensus opinion, as he simultaneously debunks that such a consensus exists at all, even in climate science, and as any economist knows best of all, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Regarding “It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration.”

It might be better to say:
“It will take decades to centuries to drastically reduce human technology based sources of CO2 emissions (we still need to breathe, don’t we?) but since these emissions are only about 3 to 5 % of all emissions, this will only represent a 3 to 5% reduction of CO2 entering the atmosphere. This has little bearing on the stabilization of atmospheric concentration, since natural sources of CO2 can overwhelm those of human origin”

Gee, I hope someone is archiving this post so it doesn’t quietly disappear!

Everyone here ok with the “sophisticated” math that Dr. Tol is asking you to accept? ‘Cause you have looked under the covers and are persuaded it’s a rock solid piece of research?

Step up with Anthony and signal your personal endorsement of it! Don’t be shy! You know it to be true! Just step up and say something like “I have never seen such an elegant statistical analysis in my life!” or something like that.

Be bold and take a stand! Like, say, like Dr. Tol did in his conclusions!:

“There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans.”

On the one hand Tol debunks Cook et al, then immediately expresses the overt warmist case “There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans.” and “It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration.”. He might as well just agree with Cook’s consensus and have done with it.

Good for Tol. Steve Mc pleaded with me to withhold a second letter aimed at Cook, the first posted here and elsewhere previously. I replied that disagreed with Tol’s strategy, but would agree to a two week hold on tactics, despite what RT himself suggested. So, with more polish, will be fired off tomorrow. And perhaps JoNova, the Bish, and WUWT might take additional notice.

Sorry, also wondering about the “polarization of the climate debate” comment? There has been only one side doing the polarizing.
This is also pointless as the POTUS quoted the 97% crap already and the damage has been done. This is just another distraction from the important questions that remain unanswered.
You earn a living doing this Dr. Tol?

Dana’s panties must be in a mighty knot today as the ASG has put their inability to reach consensus in writing for all the world to see! He’s going to be pissy about EVERYTHING until someone gives him a lolly or gets him down for a nap…..

Anthony-
Remember when there was a discussion thread in here about coming up with a “logo” or something to counteract that stupid red 97% dot of death? The one you posted here with BUSTED over it is PERFECT. Short. Understandable. TRUE. And will make the Hardly Boys wet their pants. It might even make them think TWICE before they develop any more shiny marketing, brainwashing widgets. I won’t hold my breath…but BUSTED can be applied to all of them and sent right back out.

Still hopeful that some brave souls will step forward with direct comments (compliments even!) about Dr. Tol’s math that suggests the Cook et al (2013) paper suggests the consensus might be as low as 91%. You agree with his math?

(Of course, even though Dr. Tol makes some badly wrong assumptions that leads to his results going off the rails, he doesn’t even really believe his findings anyway. He’s on record saying:

but cut him some slack there, because at least he has the kahunas to try to do the math and try to challenge Cook. So I am specifically asking for your inisghts on how well he did his math. Just for the record. Thanks.)

As to what is wrong with Tol’s paper, I can think of about 24 errors right off the top of my head.

Even if you leave aside some of the quantitative errors – which no one seems to want to investigate here so far – he does things like cite sources that state the exact opposite of the case he is making. Example:

Tol says, discussing Cook(2013)’s raters: “Fatigue may have been a problem, with low data
quality as a result (Lyberg and Biemer 2008).”

But what, in fact, do Lyberg and Biemer (2008) actually say?

“The fatigue discussed by Lyberg and Biemer (2008) addresses fatigue in survey subjects, describing how subjects taking repeated surveys can affect data quality. The abstracts, which are the subjects of the rating process in C13, cannot demonstrate fatigue. The raters performed the function of a survey interviewer in the process of rating abstracts. When contacted, Dr. Biemer confirmed that interviewers exhibit increased proficiency over time. According to T14’s cited source, the effect of rating large numbers of abstracts would have the opposite effect to
that stated in T14.”

Anthony began by referring to a paper as “veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias, classification errors, poor data quality, and inconsistency”. That pretty much describes Dr. Tol’s paper. Which I hope stays up as well.

Have a good evening, all. I am going to watch the New York Rangers – L.A. Kings game, but may find time to visit.

Following nikfromnewyork’s link to Mann’s face book page revealed an astonishing ignorance by one poster who quoted…”carbon sequestration in peat-lands may have had important climate cooling effects…” ??? What next, “carbon” sequestration in trees?!!

The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded. There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans.

What a tangled up mess.

1. Tol says the conclusions of Cook et al are unfounded, and then in the very next sentence pretty much says he thinks they are right.
2. The debate is not and never was about IF human activity causes climate change. The debate is about how much and quantifying any harm that may result.

I haven’t seen the full paper as it is pay walled, but from the little I see here, this paper contradicts itself (see 1. above) and adds nothing to our understanding of endangerment, just some hand waving on the issue along with some references to the ability to reduce emissions to zero on some vague assumption that despite the lack of consensus discovered in Tol’s own paper, it still needs to be done.

Anyone else here seen the math? Or are you just confident in your gut the paper must be right? Anthony, you seen the math? Any thoughts on it?

For now, here’s a little sanity check teaser just to see if what Tol is saying passing the smell test.

In his paper, Tol makes the claim that the fact that the two raters of each abstract in Cook et al’s study disagreed about 33% of the time. Disagreements were settled by a reconciliation process, and if the two raters still disagreed, it went to a third tie-breaker. Tol infers from this that were still be residual errors left after that first round of reconciliation. Fair enough, but at this point he goes all “oooh, look at me do math”-y on us, and performs some operations that magically take the number of papers rejecting the consensus in Cook’s study from 78 to 379. Just right out of thin air. He doesn’t tell what papers they might be, just that his test tells him that they *must* be there. This is how he “determines” that the “real” consensus is only about 91%.

Leaving aside the mistaken assumption that he makes in this test that sends him off the rails – and I will assure, there is a very big mistake on this one – does that even make sense to you? That he was able to inflate the number of abstracts rejecting the consensus by a factor of almost 5 just running some test after the fact???? Seriously???

And if it *does* make sense to you, then that means that there were, in fact 379/11,944 = 3.17% of ALL the abstracts in Cook’s study – including the no opinion ones – that rejecting the consensus. If that is the case then about 16 out of every 500 papers should reject the consensus. You think that is correct? You think that would verify Tol’s work? Go ahead. Prove it. All the tools available to do so quite easily are already freely available from Cook.

Guess what. I doubt anyone will try. But I further doubt that, if they do, that they will get anywhere near that result.

It’s nonsense.

REPLY: My advice: if you so strongly believe Cook’s paper is without fault, petition him to release all the data, and let’s replicate it. Otherwise your opinion is just noise in the face of Cook preventing science from doing replication.

@ davidmhoffer, there’s nothing necessarily a “tangled up mess” in what you cited. Cook alleged that 97% of scientific papers he survey support the AGW hypothesis. Tol says he also supports the hypothesis, but that Cook’s paper is invalid. I don’t see any contradiction at all.

I commented on the last several times Tol busted cook’s paper. Tol gives this silly stuff more legs when it has pretty well eaten itself to death. Even the Australian Society of Geologists is well over 50% anti-CAGW and has overwhelmingly shut its zealous secretariat up over trying to issue a statement supporting CAGW. This even debunks your conclusion that Cook is right for the wrong reasons. Your even attracting bottom feeders like the climate jackal ”rustneversleeps” who himself is even surprised that there is still meat to be found on this carcass. Dr. Tol, please, we’re away ahead of you on this. Go debunk Piltdown man for a while for a break for all of us.

I noticed how you were so interested in shooting messengers that you not only lost the plot, you don’t seem to have a viable one. Are you really Connelly? I thot you had been ‘Wikki-connied’ here.

Wikki-connied: verb, transitive; (1) to ban from a Wikipedia section for displaying an excessive devotion to truth and facts; (2) to ban from scientific discussion select people (as revenge) who have been doing so to others without just cause, in particular on Wikipedia’s climate ‘science’ section. Origin: the well-documented behavior of one William Connelly, a one-time Wikipedia editor whose bias and venom ultimately led to the misinformation of credulous millions.

Having read the preprint now, I don’t see much in terms of standard scientific refutation. It seems filled with first person opinion as to methods but supports the conclusion. It’s almost like he is trying to imbue what was dead with Frankenstein-ish life. It’s ugly but it’s alive, says he.

The problem is that we are coming up to a majority of the common people who are now seeing catastrophic AGW as just that. Another attempt by some fool mad scientist to make something look real, and scary, that isn’t real or scary. My new name for catastrophic AGW: Al Grankenstein, in the flesh…er…rotting flesh. Tol is that mad scientist trying to make ugly walk again.

In support of:
“It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration. During that time, electoral fortunes will turn. Climate policy will not succeed unless it has broad societal support, at levels comparable to other public policies such as universal education or old-age support.”

William:
It will take a massive complete absolute worldwide change to nuclear power, along with draconian, fascistic enforced restrictions (population control, elimination of air travel for tourism, change in diet to enforced vegan, and so on) to achieve zero carbon dioxide emissions. There has been no discussion of the reality of what it would take to achieve zero carbon emissions.

Public support for pointless ‘investment’ in green scams will disappear when electrical prices triple, more jobs are lost to Asia, there is no significant reduction in world CO2 emissions, and there is no change in climate changes.

Jake, Pamela… I didn’t have any paywall issues, and I never visited the journal before. Might have something to do with the link Tol provided in Twitter being different, and it unlocked it for me. But can’t find it now. And, at home on different machine, I’m now blocked from reading the full paper.

So, must have been Tol’s link that had some unlock code on it, because I read the entire thing.

I have both the Paper and the SI in my posession, and here are screencaps:

Now, I’ve shown you evidence that I have the paper and SI in my possession, and I’ve stated that I read it.

You on the other hand, have NOT demonstrated you have read it. Until you can demonstrate that you have, kindly refrain saying what you “think” you know about my own experience with the paper. – Anthony

try following this link and using the scroll bar, the full paper is visible.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Just tried, two different browsers, pay wall is all I can find. Looks like the site may cache credentials, so if you have a subscription or other access that they already recognize, they may be letting you straight in off of that.

Anthony, the one I linked to reads almost exactly like the snippet I see on your link. I can’t see the entire paper at your link. So am not sure what scroll bars you are using. They don’t scroll past the abstract for me.

When IPCC AR4 came out, Jay Leno commented, on his show, to the effect of: “There is a new United Nations report out that says global warming is even worse than they previously predicted. It must be pretty bad. They previously predicted it would destroy the planet.”

Rustneversleeps,
The Paper is paywalled for me so i can’t check Dr. Tol’s math. However I did read the original Cook paper and came to the same conclusion.

First: the methodology is subjective. Subjectivity is useless

Second: Only one of his 7 categories placed a quantifiable definition of anthropogenic contribution at 50% or greater. This makes the other agreements subjective, and the paper worthless

Third: He compares combinations of different levels of agreement against each other.As most categories are subjective, Comparing numerical and linguistic affirmations is incorrect. thus the paper is useless.

Fourth: There were no significant controls in place for duplicates, rebuttals or pieces unrelated to climate change. Work that has been debunked can still be part of the representative sample. This makes the paper useless..

Fifth: The paper only reviewed the abstracts, that is not the same as reviewing the body of work within the paper. Failure to distinguish between opinion and substantiated evidence maes this paper useless.

Sixth: The source of his independent raters was also a potential source of bias, This makes the results subjective and the paper useless.

Seventh: The raters were not independent, This makes the methodology incorrect and the paper useless.

Eighth: The issue in the climate debates has nothing to do with whether there is or is not an anthropogenic contribution, it is solely about how much,. Failure to restrict the categories to those that have a stated quantifiable human contribution greater than or equal to 50% or more of observed warming makes this paper useless.

Ninth: The policy debate centers around the differences in sensitivity between the models (High) and observations (low). Failure to distinguish papers discussing these variables from those researchers personal beliefs makes the paper useless.

Eleventh: Failure to control for publication rates between researchers, allows more active publishers to skew the data set. This is a source of bias and renders the paper useless.

Twelfth: Science is not a democracy, The failure of a hypothesis to a single repeatable experiment or falsifying evidence is all that matters. Quantifying the consensus is therefore worthless.

thirteenth : Failure to recognize the meaningless nature of consensus in science is a failure of the researcher. Any work produced to that end is there fore useless.

fourteenth Groupthink and the inherent problems is well documented. The idea of a consensus reinforces groupthink. The paper is therefor harmful.

Im sure many of those examples seem repetitive but the truth is the analysis committed multiple failures from concept, methodology, data collection, data analysis, conclusion and impact that each iteration of a bad Idea deserves its own mention. Its like keeping a baby in a closet to see if it develops language. Its wrong on so many levels that each nuance deserves its own point.

It does seem “unusual” – and noteworthy!!! – that a simple paper (by Toll) that criticizes the basic methodology of the supposed 97% claim so fundamental to the CAGW religion is being so suddenly and rigorously attacked here.

Thus, four papers that SUPPORTED and CREATED the 97% fundamentalism from assumptions and from flawed evidence that WAS ITSELF flawed and distorted were immediately accepted, publicized and praised and funded and reproduced around the world. Ten thousand papers and speeches and papers and publicity releases by the government-paid universities and bureaucracies and laboratories that BENEFIT from the 97% fundamentalism creed are accepted as “truth” and used to support that Creed many tens of thousands times more in millions of classrooms.

ONE paper that criticizes the methodology of the 97% fundamentalism myth is IMMEDIATELY criticized and intimately analyzed in point-by-point detail by anonymous writers in a private web blog sponsored by a single individual. But the 97%?

Well, today’s US president would never use a lie to support his agenda, would he?

I wouldn’t put too much weight in Tol’s comments in the conclusions. You basically can’t get a critical climate science paper published without some disclaimers about how you don’t deny the existence of substantial anthropogenic climate change yadda yadda yadda.

rustneversleeps, aka Rust Never Sleeps, an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse…best known for the line, “it’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Ironically, rustneversleeps is fervently opposed to burn out.

The Tol paper is, and will be, criticized and analyzed here in the exact same fashion that EVERY paper gets here. If it’s full of mistakes, assumptions, mischaracterization, and flawed logic-then it DESERVES to be torn to pieces, exposed for what it is, and discussed openly. JUST LIKE COOK ET AL.

I know some people cannot comprehend this, and never will, but that’s how people who are NOT hypocrites act. They behave in a CONSISTENT manner, whether they like or side with the author of the paper or not. Whether or not it “helps” or “hinders” their cause, or the one attributed to them by outsiders. It’s called knowing what is FACT vs what is OPINION and basing one’s judgements on the FACTS. If Tol’s paper turns out to be garbage-SO BE IT. If it’s not-SO BE IT. But he doesn’t get preferential treatment or kudos he hasn’t earned.

“Thus, four papers that SUPPORTED and CREATED the 97% fundamentalism from assumptions and from flawed evidence that WAS ITSELF flawed and distorted were immediately accepted, publicized and praised and funded and reproduced around the world. Ten thousand papers and speeches and papers and publicity releases by the government-paid universities and bureaucracies and laboratories that BENEFIT from the 97% fundamentalism creed are accepted as “truth” and used to support that Creed many tens of thousands times more in millions of classrooms.”

Your memory might be going. Or perhaps your ability to read. But those papers were NOT accepted by everyone, were NOT publicized, praised, funded or reproduced by everyone. All FOUR papers were criticized, shredded, and revealed to be garbage over and over again. In fact, no one I personally know has even HEARD of them, much less read and agreed with them. Neither one of my college graduate children, nor their spouses, have ever heard of them. Ouch huh?

Oh, and every single person I have directed to them has read them and responded with laughter and shock at how contrived they are. Maybe that’s why the majority of Americans doesn’t trust “science” or “scientists” anymore.

The issue is with the original paper: Is the data the papers or the raters? And where might the source of errors be in either case?

1. If the papers are the “data”: Are the papers a truly random sample? If the papers were indeed taken from a random collection of weather/climate papers, were they controlled for the growth of hot topic grants, climate journals, date/decade of publish, and gate keeping? If not, then there is a potentially huge source of error here in terms of the papers not being a random sample and indeed are a biased sample.

2. Are the raters the “data”: Are the samplers a random group? Was there a control group? A better design would have been known skeptics, AGW proponents, and a mixed random control group. Given that raters would have many variables, one would have to increase the number of raters in each group in order to tighten down the results. Given the extreme risk of human error if the raters are the “data”, Cook does not use enough raters to justify any kind of statistical analysis that would lead to significance. It appears to me that the list of raters have known biases such that I believe their conclusions are biased and not based on solid metrics designed specifically to remove bias and that are well calibrated among several (IE more than three) scientists.

If the null hypothesis was rejected (and it was) but due to bias or poor design we have a paper that is potentially leading us down an expensive prim rose path based on dubious results. There is high risk of that actually being the case here. From its design, I can see that there is a huge potential for such a result. Cook’s paper should have been rejected in order to conservatively prevent such weak papers from being taken at face value by both the science community and policy makers. Or worse, having someone like Tol trying to put lipstick on a pig.

Maybe you missed the words under the title of this Blog. Maybe you failed to notice that Anthony’s blogroll lists PRO AGW blogs along with LUKEWARMERS right there along with wackos and idiot blogs. (Hint…it means he offers a buffet instead of canned Spam every meal)

But surely Tol’s paper falls under the umbrella of “Commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology and recent news” to me. And surely, uncritically posting things and letting readers join in is part of a healthy and active debate atmosphere. Maybe that’s why today Alexa shows WUWT ranked globally and in the US so MUCH HIGHER than sites like SKS, or…what was your blog called again….?

Of course the Cook paper is bullshit without a shred of real evidence to support its conclusions. That is obvious from Cook’s refusal to share his data – not sharing is an ironclad guarantee of the falsity, or lack, or both, of data.

Unfortunately, there are still enough other liars still stroking him that the Liar-In-Chief will continue to repeat the lie. Showing him the Petition Project statement didn’t deter him from doing that, so why would Tol’s paper?

Striped? Like a skunk?
And I think you have to be GIVEN legitimacy before it can all be stipped (or striped) from you. He was never given any….so it’s not possible to stip or stripe it from him. Right?

Who do you represent? Who is we? Is this a new handle? Haven’t seen it before but you say you are familiar with this blog. Do you normally just lurk? Why are you hiding? What are you hiding?

Why can’t you use your name? Or the group you are representing? A lot of people here use real names. You can find more about me than you care to know, along with a lot of other folks here using real names.

If you are afraid to use your real name, why? If you are afraid to say who “We” is, why? Or did you mean all the readers of this blog? If you did, you are very wrong.

Note how people can go back and look at posts from the past here. Can you do that where you live?

Shoot. I should know better than to feed a troll, but I am really curious about what seems to be rancour in your posts. Did you just have a bad day?

Given that this subject has been so widely discussed, I wonder why you (and me) are even bothering to post about it.

Have a good evening. Score in the hockey game is tied at 2 each. Is that relevant to CAGW at the moment? Might be. They are skating on ice. 😏

Thanks all those that provide critical comments on the subjects presented on this blog. You continue to educate and it is much appreciated. Also the fact that much of the discussion is multi-faceted with many differing views without censorship. The fact that “rustneversleeps” and others are allowed to question even the motives of the blog owner, in public, for all to see, shows everyone what a great blog this is.

Felix says:
June 4, 2014 at 6:24 pm
So, now that the consensus has been bounded between 91 and 97% isn’t it time drop the pseudo-skepticism and talk about how to best reduce ghg emissions?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And that folks, right there, is why Tol’s paper is unfortunate. It doesn’t debunk Cook et al as much as it reinforces it as being mostly correct.

Worse, it distracts from the actual issue. How much warming and how much impact? Cost of mitigation versus adaptation. These are the issues we should be considering, and if papers were evaluated on those factors alone, not only would there be no consensus, even if the publication list was reduced to papers referenced by IPCC AR5, there still wouldn’t be a consensus.

AGW increased rate of warming theory depends on increased water vapor creating ever increasing downwelling trapped longwave infrared radiation. Right now, in the high desert area of NE Oregon we have 13% humidity with a cold front coming in by Monday bringing even dryer air. Good god! The air NOW is bone dry and the soil, plus whatever dried matter is poking out of it, is bone dry. And this with the advantage of having a coal fired electricity plant just outside of Hermiston and potato storage units pumping CO2 into the air.

What I want to know is just exactly when will this water vapor driven warming, that 97% of scientists agree on, begin? My nearly 58 year old face could use some fricken moisture!!!!!

“If you have criticisms of Tol’s math, why are you not stating them? We are here to offer arguments and to respond to arguments. If you offer no specific argument then you will get no response.”

Well that’s not how the game is played. I have some friends who believe very strange things. One is an animal rights advocate. It’s futile to ask for rational discourse. I.e., why is wool bad? Why is it wrong to own pets? Even asking such questions is insulting to them. It’s a moral issue, not a rational one.

Apparently Dr. Tol will assist Mark Steyn and his lawyers in attempting to take down Michael Mann?

Steny writes,

“so it seems to me this is an excellent time to get on with the broader campaign against the climate mullahs. Aside from the best free-speech legal team in the land, we’ve now taken on someone to direct this side of the investigation against Mann. He’s already working full-time on the case – he was in Washington yesterday for the Congressional hearings on the IPCC, and meeting with climate scientists and others. He’ll also be heading to Penn State and other places hither and yon.”

The Intro is different now, and it has tons of links to the papers referenced:

1. Introduction
Cook et al. (2013) argue that 97% of the published literature on climate change supports the position that climate change is real and largely human-made. The paper attracted worldwide media attention and was downloaded overt 146,000 times in the first 10 months since publication. The current paper reconsiders the evidence put forward by Cook et al. (2013).

The estimate by Cook et al. (2013) was preceded by those of Anderegg et al. (2010b), Doran and Zimmerman (2009), Oreskes (2004), Rosenberg et al. (2010), studies which led to a discussion of the value of “consensus” in science and policy (Anderegg et al., 2010a, Bray, 2010, Grundmann, 2007, O’Neill and Boykoff, 2010, Poortinga et al., 2011 and Schulte, 2008). I will not revisit that discussion here, noting that consensus has no academic value (although the occasional stock take is valuable for teaching and guiding future research) and limited policy value. Cook et al. (2013) has been praised (Reusswig, 2013)1. and criticized (Legates et al., 2013). Legates et al. tried and failed to replicate part of Cook׳s abstract ratings, showing that their definitions were inconsistently applied. Montford (2013) notes that Cook׳s consensus is rather shallow—that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that humans have played some role in observed climate change (Andrews et al., 2012, Hegerl et al., 2007, Randall et al., 2007, Rohling et al., 2012 and Annan and Hargreaves, 2011).

In this paper, I focus on the technical aspects of Cook et al. (2013). After presenting the survey and comparing it to the accepted standards in Sections 2 and3 discusses the representativeness of the sample, the biases, data errors, classification errors, and the trend in the measured consensus. Section 4 recaps the discussion in more accessible language. Section 5 concludes.

Jake, Pamela… I didn’t have any paywall issues, and I never visited the journal before. Might have something to do with the link Tol provided in Twitter being different, and it unlocked it for me. But can’t find it now. And, at home on different machine, I’m now blocked from reading the full paper.

So, must have been Tol’s link that had some unlock code on it, because I read the entire thing.

I completely smpathize with your predicament, having beaten more than a few calluses into my forehead over the years when trying to figure out some obscure computer fustercluck.

I disagree with the only way to stabilize CO2’s atmospheric concentration to zero being reducing emissions to 0. It will find its own balance, just as it did in the past. I don’t know what the mechanism was, but the planet apparently has one.

@rustynuts
Peer reviewed papers are given a grace period before full analysis, no? Thousands of peer reviewed papers have been written about in the press as soon as they’re published – never heard anyone saying, ‘hold on let’s check the math before we give this legitimacy’..

Maybe, I am unique in having read 40 of Cook’s papers, deliberately chosen at random and wasting several hours of my life.

None of these papers came close to endorsing the idea that global warming/climate change were caused by the activities of man.

However, just over half – presumably to get research funding – made comments like “if global warming occurs, then the habitat of the rare spotted blue moth could be in peril”. Otherwise the references to global warming/climate change were obscure or non-existent.

I am quite happy to say, and without a moment’s hesitation, that the findings and conclusions of Cook’s paper are complete and utter BS.

What’s the point? In addition to the fact that AGW is defined by AGW-scam researchers as an increase in CO2 200 years after a temperature increase, glaciers that started melting around 1900, etc, there’s the big smelly elephant in the room that non-AGW-scam supporters aren’t getting grants and aren’t getting published, and have been increasingly censored for years, so their numbers have been intentionally reduced by AGW-scammers. It seems to me that censorship of non-AGW papers could even skew the results produced by volunteer AGW-scam volunteers reading abstracts that don’t include the fact that the temperature increased 200 years before CO2, since negative feedback is science, secondary to political-correctness..

Why is PR-man Cook involved in climate science – is the fact that it needs to be sold another elephant?

Consensus has no place in physical science. Physical science that predicts results that have no correlation with observations isn’t science – its garbage.

The sole major survey of the opinions of physical scientists on AGW is the Petition Project, and if 97% of the signatures were invalid, it would still represent 2X the number of Cook’s cherry-picked abstracts supposedly supporting AGW.
If Cook wanted a survey of scientists, rather than propaganda, why not contact the physical scientists whose names are scrolling on the Petition Project website to verify their identify, videotape their responses, and post the videos on Youtube – even without soliciting additional signatures.

We’ve been playing this game for nearly a quarter century, with no appreciable change in policy other than increasingly falsified data, increased secrecy and destruction of records, claims fincreasingly disconnected from reality, increased geo-engineering, and increased censorship.
Rothschilds own geoengineering corporations and the Weather Channel.
Can we call it game over and maybe start studying real environmental issues?

Rustneversleeps,
what is you take on the Cook paper? Is it good? If so, how do you know? Do you have the data and information needed to replicate it? And don’t expect us to take your word for it, step up and show us!

I don’t know why so much angst and effort is going in to this 97% stuff. The premise was incorrectly posed , and the result is just GIGO. The question is not ‘whether’ man’s activities contribute to a warming of the globe. I am sure a large majority of scientists, maybe 97% for all I know, would agree they are. So what! The relevant questions are ‘how much’ and ‘how rapidly’? Increasingly, the answers to those questions appear to be ‘not much’ and ‘quite slowly’. Whether on the scale of a generation or two, this will overwhelm natural variations is a moot point. So we should continue to research this, at a moderate and Inextravagant level, and be prepared to adopt mitigation processes if things start to get out of hand. And we should use energy efficiently and effectively, and adopt energy efficiencies as it is established they work.

If you have criticisms of Tol’s math, why are you not stating them? We are here to offer arguments and to respond to arguments. If you offer no specific argument then you will get no response.”

Firstly, Tol corrects it to a 91% consensus which really just reinforces the idea of a strong scientific consensus.

Secondly the maths is bad. 2 people rated each abstract. In the case where the rating differed they went through a 1st reconciliation stage where the raters discussed and tried to agree on a single rating. Tol examined the reconciliation stage and looked at how the papers resolved in this stage were correct. Obviously one of the 2 raters would see their rating changed. Tol created this histogram of how each rating changes.

Unfortunately he created this histogram across all ratings. So he has lost the important information that in general the reconciliation process moved papers towards a more neutral position. i.e. if a paper endorsed AGW then it was more likely it would be resolved to having no position and visa versa. Papers that rejected AGW were more likely to be resolved to no position.

Richard Tol then took this histogram and applied it to the disputed rating in each category. i.e. a paper rated 2 he assumed had a 50% chance of becoming a 1 or 50% chance of becoming a 3. This is not what is seen in the real data at all. The real data showed reconciliation moved towards the neutral position. If you were to test Tol’s method against the real data for the 1st reconsiliation process it gets it completely wrong.

Tol major error was assuming this histogram applies equally to every rating. This was always going to result in moving papers from high population categories to the extremes.

So not only is this paper reinforcing a scientific consensus the flawed maths allows “rustneversleeps” to argue that skeptics will accept any crap.

Rusty betrays the old Stalinist mindset so common amongst Warmists who desperately try to control open debate and discussion. His suggestion that this posting and comments might ‘disappear’ because it doesn’t conform to some ideological position simply shows that he doesn’t know how WUWT works…things don’t disappear here…that happens over at SS…
but perhaps the simplest way to stop the wrangling would be for Obersturmbannfuhrer Cook himself to step forward with his data, code and method and simply demonstrate how he got to 97%.
Should take but a minute of his time. Put him in the clear and win the argument for the Warmists.
We’ll wait…but we won’t hold our breaths!

“There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans.”

That’s a guess, the first step in creating a scientific theory. If the paper doesn’t show any further evidence for his guess, his paper is even less significant than Cook et. al., who at least tried to proof their claim

The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded. There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct. Cook et al., however, failed to demonstrate this…….

So I can say that with “no doubt in my mind that” climate change would NOT occur if humans were not around? Better definitions and understanding is required. Global warming would be helpful. Climate change has always been happening. There is no doubt in my mind.

Effects of Rapid Global Warming at the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary on Neotropical Vegetation
Temperatures in tropical regions are estimated to have increased by 3° to 5°C, compared with Late Paleocene values, during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56.3 million years ago) event………

I wonder if where Tol’s statement includes There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct.
Isn’t that the disclaimer that has to go into every single scientific paper submission these days?

If not, it looks like this paper adds to Cook’s consensus as it supports AGW.

Could be an interesting bun-fight has Tol is far from being a sceptic and Cook like his hero Mann has a universe size ego and is the current ‘hero’ of the cause.

The 97% claim is and always been BS from top to bottom , it’s so poor that fails even a basic maths test.
But is show how much we are not in the area of science but in the one of religion where despite the poor quality of the claim all that matters how important it is in supporting ‘the cause ‘ and if its important it must be defended to the death and dam the facts.

I have to say, I find it weird to see people criticizing the same things I criticize accept a paper the moment it is published, without any critical analysis, simply because they like its conclusions.

There are a number of issues which, even if you don’t accept are problems, certainly need to be addressed before accepting what this paper says. Section 3.4 is the most obvious. Richard Tol basically just hand-waved away entire categories (mitigation and impacts) because they don’t provide evidence showing the cause of global warming. That’s questionable, at best, as a consensus isn’t about papers showing evidence. It’s about papers showing agreement.

Even if we leave aside Tol’s decision to simply redefine the word consensus, you can’t argue a consensus is meaningless because science is about evidence, not agreement, then go redefine “consensus” as only relating to those papers which provide evidence. You cannot believe both:

1) The consensus is meaningless because it’s about popularity, and science is about is about evidence.
2) Only work which provides evidence qualifies as part of the consensus.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans.”
====================
humans 150 years ago used 4% of the earth’s surface for cities and farming combined. today we use 40%. 40%!! Our cities alone today use 4% of the surface.

Of course we cause climate change. Cut down the forests and replace them with cities and farmland and the local climate will change. Now repeat this over 40% of the earth’s surface and you have changed the climate of the planet.

However, nowhere does this say anything about CO2 causing climate change. No matter how much we reduce CO2, 40% of the earth’s surface has been changed over the past 150 years, and this has changed the climate.

Unless we are willing to turn our cities and farmland back into forests this cannot be changed. No matter how much we reduce CO2.

So, Is Richard Tol yet another CAGW fanatic trying to prove there is an overwhelming 91% consensus that is pro-AGW? I expect his methods and arithmetic are faulty. Perhaps someone will analyse it in detail and tell us the mistakes. Is he a peer of John Cook? I think we should be told.

I’ve been thinking of ways to make money off the CAGW money train. I’m thinking of publishing my own study showing a 97% consensus (I thinking an online poll where I discard results if I deem the person unqualified). Then I can become an IPCC hero too.

Ironically rustneversleep has obviously not read Lyberg and Briemer 2008 (chapter 22 here http://joophox.net/papers/SurveyHandbookCRC.pdf ). I am still awaiting some explanation from Tol around the use of “fatigue”, but it is apparent that the SkS comment #15 isn’t just poor English, rather the usual misinformation.

”Apparently Dr. Tol will assist Mark Steyn and his lawyers in attempting to take down Michael Mann?”

After this post, I’m questioning the wisdom of putting economist Tol in such a position. I hope he’s not a cat among the pidgeons. Yeah he is skewering the IPCC and all that, but his preoccupation with Cook’s paper and this recent ‘analysis’, that essentially supports Cook and accepts that man (he has no doubt) is warming the planet and we have to decarbonize, wouldn’t give me confidence in his leading the fight. He’s an economist for crying out loud. If put on the stand with his beliefs, how is the future as he sees it not shaped like a hockey stick? Steyn needs someone like McIntyre who has taken the hockey stick apart. Gee, let’s not screw up this great freedom fighter.

There is no doubt this effort by Tol is going to energize the demoralized thermageddon force. We will be seeing posts by the resuscitated proponents of the climate gravy train. Cook himself will be pleased by this.

Please correct my understanding in English, but this comment seems correct:
“There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans.”
Is this just sarcasm? Because, obviously, the overwhelming literature is paid or sponsored to present just that. But this not necessarily mean it is correct… I mean, there is overwhelming literature about werewolves, vampires, etc… And pretty good well thought hypothesis on their physiology too!!

It was said somewhere that if you tell a scientist to find you something, he/she will.

It was said somewhere that if you tell a scientist to find you something, he/she will.
===============
There are a near infinite positive examples of anything you want to prove. Which means they are essentially worthless to prove anything. Which is why science relies of falsification.

It isn’t the number of positive examples that are important, it is the number of negative examples. If there are zero negative examples your theory might be correct. If there is one negative example, your theory is wrong.

Unfortunately a large number of soft sciences ignore this truism. They count the number of positive examples as proof that they are correct. Any we end up with “penis envy” as the explanation for male female gender issues.

the wisdom of putting economist Tol in such a position
=========
economics has a long history of forecasting using models. over time they developed a large body of mathematics to evaluate the effectiveness of models. this has allowed economics to identify and reject those models that are worthless.

climate science has no such body of mathematics. the IPCC instead average all climate models to create an “ensemble mean”, without first evaluating which models might be garbage. Thus the problem of garbage in, garbage out, as the IPCC projections are diverging further and further from reality (observations).

the tools to evaluate climate models do exist. however, climate science is not trained in their use. it is economists that receive this training.

Tol is finding out what happens to those that dare stray form the true path of righteousness, even if by only one inch , the attack dogs of the dogma will be straight unto you to pull you back into line asap , even if those dogs are rather old and toothless and not a little mad.

So Tol has shown that the method of measuring the degree of scientific consensus in the published literature used by Cook et al is not as accurate or reliable as claimed.

Getting people to read the abstracts of 12,000 papers and grade the degree of support for AGW in the paper has a greater error margin and underestimates the actual degree of consensus significantly compared to the real degree of support for AGW given by the authors of the papers.
Who when asked showed that the actual support by the scientists publishing research is around 97%

According to Tol the Cook et al method of assessing this fails to measure this accurately and underestimates it by around 6%.

Conneley AKA rustneversleeps said:
June 4, 2014 at 4:17 pm
“Still hopeful that some brave souls will step forward with direct comments (compliments even!) about Dr. Tol’s math that suggests the Cook et al (2013) paper suggests the consensus might be as low as 91%. You agree with his math?

(Of course, even though Dr. Tol makes some badly wrong assumptions that leads to his results going off the rails, he doesn’t even really believe his findings anyway. He’s on record saying:

Published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role.

and
(CAn I have this below in bold?)
[b]The consensus is of course in the high nineties.[/b]

but cut him some slack there, because at least he has the kahunas to try to do the math and try to challenge Cook. So I am specifically asking for your inisghts on how well he did his math. Just for the record. Thanks.)”.

So there we have it, spelling mistakes and all. From the arch climate septic himself. A boil chafing in the bum crack of humanity. Even this denier of the true climate admits Kooks paper is not accurate therefore not worthy.

economics has a long history of forecasting using models. over time they developed a large body of mathematics to evaluate the effectiveness of models. this has allowed economics to identify and reject those models that are worthless.

climate science has no such body of mathematics …

Climate science seems to rely primarily on a large amorphous body of political science methods to identify which models are useful.

First- Let’s establish a logical line between the two most logical end points in the case of Cook.

On one end, we put the option A. Option A is the worst of the worst in any of the following categories: he’s batcrap crazy, he has a brain disorder, he has the math skills of a 4 year old, he has zero critical thinking skills. Option A is basically “Incapable of producing accurate results due to things beyond his control”.

At the other end, we put option B. Option B is the worst of the worst in the opposite manner:
he’s evil, he’s a freaking genius who knows that his studies are garbage, but his intention is to disrupt all rational, factual scientific discussion for some reason, he’s on the payroll of some “One World” group etc. Option B is basically “Purposefully producing inaccurate results to serve another purpose”.

Of course there is a myriad of space between the two logical ends….more unintelligent that evil, but still both….more evil but with a strong bent of not-so-smart in there too. You get the idea. But here’s my point:

If his actual, factual place on the scale is on the side of A, then there’s nothing we can do to change his mind, affect his conclusions, or convince him or anyone else who falls on the A side of the scale that’s he’s wrong.

If his actual, factual place on the scale is on the side of B, there’s STILL nothing we can do to change his mind or the minds of the other B side individuals….BUT if any part of him is motivated by a desire to disrupt all rational, factual, scientific discussion, then he is SUCCEEDING IN SPADES!!! Even in HERE! And THAT irritates the crap out of me. We CAN stop him from achieving that. We need to brush this little smarmy, mind-game playing, “experimental climate communicator” under the rug and then STAND on him. Along with all of his companions and his little dog Dana too.

Every so often I get this prickly feeling on the back of my neck and the hunch that we are ALL being used as observational RATS in one of his and Lewd’s social experiments, and that they use our reactions to produce their next round of unabashed, shiney, propaganda marketing widgets. I’m not arrogant enough to state that my hunch is correct to ANY degree…but I can share it.

And one more thought…if there is even a REMOTE possibility that Anthony posted Tol’s paper here without reading it or examining it for flaws first, because he simply liked the conclusion and hoped to add it to the huge pile of bricks that already undermine the Cook et Pal study, then I’d expect Anthony to be the kind of honest, upright man we all think he is and come clean. We’re all human and we all do “stupid” on a regular basis, but we all respect someone who admits they were wrong over someone who pretends to be perfect.

But there are a myriad of other totally logical reasons that Anthony could have posted Tol’s paper here, warts and all. I personally hope he is conducting his own social experiment to see if WE are so tied to our own DOGMA that we’d just cheer and pat Tol on the back, or agree with him without even reading it, or gloss over it’s flaws like mind numbed sheep. (You know….the ones the opposition SAYS we are). I hope Tol was even in on it! Maybe it was some kind of grand test to see if we would really be consistent and subject “one of our own” to the same kind of scrutiny that we do everyone else.

In that case, it would appear that 97% of WUWT followers were consistently critical, or reasonably suspicious, or withheld judgement until they could read and digest the Tol paper-in a manner wholly. Such behavior is consistent with intelligent, cautious, healthy critical thinking skills. 3% represented the “fringes” made up of trolls, infiltrators, and baaaaaaaaaaaack slapping sheep.

I am certainly no expert in statistical analysis, yet I had no problem determining Cook’s paper was crap. I suspect the reason Dr Tol decided to pursue this line is because of the nasty twitter response from Cook and the SkS crowd back when he publically pointed out they had mischaracterized some of his papers in their survey study.

One of the surest “tells” in the climate debates are when people reference or are uncritical of the work of Cook and Lewandowski. (You paying attention Rust?)

First- Let’s establish a logical line between the two most logical end points in the case of Cook.

On one end, we put the option A. Option A is the worst of the worst in any of the following categories: he’s batcrap crazy, he has a brain disorder, he has the math skills of a 4 year old, he has zero critical thinking skills. Option A is basically “Incapable of producing accurate results due to things beyond his control”.

At the other end, we put option B. Option B is the worst of the worst in the opposite manner:
he’s evil, he’s a freaking genius who knows that his studies are garbage, but his intention is to disrupt all rational, factual scientific discussion for some reason, he’s on the payroll of some “One World” group etc. Option B is basically “Purposefully producing inaccurate results to serve another purpose”.

Of course there is a myriad of space between the two logical ends….more unintelligent that evil, but still both….more evil but with a strong bent of not-so-smart in there too. You get the idea. But here’s my point:

If his actual, factual place on the scale is on the side of A, then there’s nothing we can do to change his mind, affect his conclusions, or convince him or anyone else who falls on the A side of the scale that’s he’s wrong.

If his actual, factual place on the scale is on the side of B, there’s STILL nothing we can do to change his mind or the minds of the other B side individuals….BUT if any part of him is motivated by a desire to disrupt all rational, factual, scientific discussion, then he is SUCCEEDING IN SPADES!!! Even in HERE! And THAT irritates the crap out of me. We CAN stop him from achieving that. We need to brush this little smarmy, mind-game playing, “experimental climate communicator” under the rug and then STAND on him. Along with all of his companions and his little dog Dana too.

Every so often I get this prickly feeling on the back of my neck and the hunch that we are ALL being used as observational RATS in one of his and Lewd’s social experiments, and that they use our reactions to produce their next round of unabashed, shiney, propaganda marketing widgets. I’m not arrogant enough to state that my hunch is correct to ANY degree…but I can share it.

And one more thought…if there is even a REMOTE possibility that Anthony posted Tol’s paper here without reading it or examining it for flaws first, because he simply liked the conclusion and hoped to add it to the huge pile of bricks that already undermine the Cook et Pal study, then I’d expect Anthony to be the kind of honest, upright man we all think he is and come clean. We’re all human and we all do “stupid” on a regular basis, but we all respect someone who admits they were wrong over someone who pretends to be perfect.

But there are a myriad of other totally logical reasons that Anthony could have posted Tol’s paper here, warts and all. I personally hope he is conducting his own social experiment to see if WE are so tied to our own DOGMA that we’d just cheer and pat Tol on the back, or agree with him without even reading it, or gloss over it’s flaws like mind numbed sheep. (You know….the ones the opposition SAYS we are). I hope Tol was even in on it! Maybe it was some kind of grand test to see if we would really be consistent and subject “one of our own” to the same kind of scrutiny that we do everyone else.

In that case, it would appear that 97% of WUWT followers were consistently critical, or reasonably suspicious, or withheld judgement until they could read and digest the Tol paper-in a manner wholly. Such behavior is consistent with intelligent, cautious, healthy critical thinking skills. 3% represented the “fringes” made up of trolls, infiltrators, and baaaaaaaaaaaack slapping sheep.

And as a lighter aside-Pam Gray…I’m STILL laughing out loud-
“Tol is that mad scientist trying to make ugly walk again.”
Whether Tol is mad or not remains to be seen, but Cook’s paper sure is “UGLY WALKING”.

AlJazeera America – March 30, 2014IPCC: effects of climate change ‘worse than we had predicted’
…”Things are worse than we had predicted” in 2007, when the group of scientists last issued this type of report, said report co-author Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at Independent University in Bangladesh.

“We are going to see more and more impacts, faster and sooner than we had anticipated.”….

—————

The Conversation – 8 January 2014How clouds can make climate change worse than we thought

…Perhaps our result can serve as a reminder that not knowing everything does not justify complacency. Uncertainty may mean the problem is worse than you thought.

Think Progress – November 26, 2012
Nearly 3 years ago, the late William R. Freudenburg discussed in a AAAS presentation how new scientific findings since the 2007 IPCC report are found to be more than twenty times as likely to indicate that global climate disruption is “worse than previously expected,” rather than “not as bad as previously expected.”
[William R. Freudenburg , University of California, Santa Barbara, CA]
—————

Science Blogs – May 20, 2013Why Global Warming’s Effects Will Be Worse Than You Were Thinking
The story of climate change has always been more of worst-case, or at least, worser-case scenarios developing and less about good news showing up out of nowhere and making us unexpectedly happy….

[Greg Laden]
—————

Independent – 21 March 2014
Letters: Climate change: it’s worse than we thought
Contrary to your headline “Climate change: the official prophecy of doom” (18 March), it would appear that the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is a masterclass in understatement.
[Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director, Grantham]
—————

Guardian – 3 February 2007Worse than we thought
· Report warns of 4C rise by 2100
· Floods and food and water shortages likely
Average temperatures could increase by as much as 6.4C by the end of the century if emissions continue to rise, with a rise of 4C most likely, according to the final report of an expert panel set up by the UN to study the problem.
[David Adam – Environment Correspondent for the Guardian between 2005 and 2010]
—————

WWF – September 2009
The Arctic in your back yard

Arctic warming affects us all – it can cause extreme global weather changes, widespread flooding and big increases in greenhouse gas emission that will in turn make global warming even worse.

We’ve also just published a new report called Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications, which lists dire global consequences of a warming Arctic – far worse than previous projections.
[WWF]
—————

Metro – 31 Mar 2014War, hunger, disease… and worse to come: The impact of climate change all over the world
…Friends of the Earth said: ‘Droughts, floods and famines are just some of the devastating effects people are suffering as a result of extreme weather. Unless we take urgent measures, they will get far worse.’….
[Friends of the Earth]
—————

Science Daily – February 15, 2009Climate Change Likely To Be More Devastating Than Experts Predicted, Warns Top IPCC Scientist
…”There is a real risk that human-caused climate change will accelerate the release of carbon dioxide from forest and tundra ecosystems, which have been storing a lot of carbon for thousands of years,” said Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science at Stanford, and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “We don’t want to cross a critical threshold where this massive release of carbon starts to run on autopilot.”…
[IPCC scientist Chris Field of Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science]
—————

Dallas Observer Blogs – Oct. 14 2013Climate Scientists Predict a Texas Drought “Worse Than We Imagined” And a Changing Coast
….state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon told TCN. “The latest IPCC report is mostly just an incremental update of something we already knew. The [continuing] drought of 2011-20xx has taught us something we didn’t know: Rather than being a thing of the past, Texas drought can be worse than we imagined.”
[John Nielsen-Gammon – climatologist]
—————

Columbus Dispatch – April 1, 2014Global warming heads ‘out of control’
…Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which issued the 32-volume, 2,610-page report here early yesterday, said: “It is a call for action.” Without reductions in emissions, he said, the effects of warming “could get out of control.”…
[Dr. Rajendra Pachauri – Head of the IPCC]

There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct.

… it looks like this paper adds to Cook’s consensus as it supports AGW.

“This study (Cook et al 2013) found ~4,000 abstracts that say humans cause some amount of global warming. Only 143 of those indicate how much warming humans are responsible for. Of those, 65 say its a lot, 78 say it isn’t much.”

65. SIXTY FIVE. 60+5!!!!! That is how many abstracts of 11,994 that said that humans were responsible for “a lot” (I’ll guess that means more than 50%) of the current warming!!!

rustneversleeps sure came with an attitude- i suspect he was enflamed by the uncritical mooing of some of the first commenters at wuwt.
tol is a shill for the warmists. he has no honest job. he is a trougher.
and he’s just walked us down the same garden path yet another time.
thus occupied, we do nothing of consequence. they only need to buy a little more time to roll over us while we discuss nonsense.

One of the biggest problems I see with rating these papers is that they used papers starting in 1991. That’s 23 years ago!

This would be like doing a study rating 100 meteorologists forecasts for Friday, June 6th. We will do/did 20 each day, starting on June 1st.
Do you think maybe the more recent forecasts might reflect updated guidance and better skill???

Many of those papers came out well before the warming slowed/stalled. Many came out before global climate models were shown clearly to be much too warm………….regardless of some scientists sticking with the models-some have looked at empirical data.

Apparently, if you think the science has been settled for decades, then it doesn’t matter. In the last decade, one side has been speculating about the various forces that have temporarily offset greenhouse gas warming…………and they still are not sure/had any proven.

Just that uncertainty by itself, here in 2014 makes it absurd to give a paper in the 1990’s, the same weighting as one done more recently.

A skeptic of course, by definition would know this. However, by design those insisting the science is settled, in order to prove this they need to project increasingly high numbers of certainty/confidence and agreement.

The objective then, is to show the high(er) numbers rather than to show the proof.

But this is wrong. If the proof was becoming increasingly evident, then the evidence itself would serve the purpose to prove the science, instead of conducting research to see who agreed on the science, starting back in 1991.

A very nice piece of reasoning and writing. You left out one important point. Any analysis of a “consensus” among people is social science. It is irrelevant to climate. Thus the Cook paper is also pointless.

Yep Poptech, mine too. Dana actually made the comment that he “preferred to be accurate” about something so I asked him to be TRULY accurate about what his paper SAYS and does NOT SAY. Nope.
He makes me ill.

“It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration.”

Huh? Carbon dioxide emissions will NEVER be zero. Ever.
And the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is only “stable” for periods of time. History shows that it has fluctuated wildly and quickly as well as a little and over time.

You do realize climate change and AGW are two different things. One should really not confuse climate change with man made climate change :P

If the paper does not show man is causing global warming (or climate change) (or hell at least says man is the cause) but does show impacts of climate change how can you be sure the paper is endorsing MAN made climate change?

Your erroneously suggesting that all papers on climate change irregardless of cause should be counted as FOR man made climate change. Thats just wrong.

Climate change can be entirely due to natural processes so without explicitly stating it is due to humans in the paper you cant count it as stating its due to humans.

Also if your going to talk questionable go back and scrutinize the cook paper.

A paper like this would be included in the “for” section as it agrees that c02 is causing warming, and it doesnt reject the warming. You know, this paper only pegs the warming to 2100 to be 0.1C but of course, thats warming and anthropogenic so it counts…. amirite?

“The anthropogenic fraction is then used to evaluate the additional warming by analysis of its spectral contribution to the outgoing long-wavelength radiation (OLR) measured by infrared spectrometers embarked in satellites looking down. The anthropogenic CO2 additional warming extrapolated in 2100 is found lower than 0.1°C in the absence of feedbacks.

Aphan, don’t expect a response to tough questions. Multiple of mine were deleted.

Tol’s paper is fantastic, as all they can do is cherry pick red herrings from his complete destruction of Cook’s worthless paper. I am actually going to hold a celebration party with some champagne in honor of Dr. Tol’s paper being published that the zealots said would never be. Cook et al. is now completely refuted in the peer-reviewed literature and I will make sure everyone knows about it.

Cream,
Clearly I view a pile of bricks differently than you do. Where I come from, a pile of them is always the result of something thats been torn down, demolished. (New bricks come on pallets and are carefully stacked to prevent breakage) Cook et al is so filled with flaws that we’ve been pulling “bricks” out of it’s foundation since day one.

We also call really bad basketball shots that die at the rim “bricks”. That metaphor works for Cook et al too. :)

“My advice: if you so strongly believe Cook’s paper is without fault, petition him to release all the data, and let’s replicate it. Otherwise your opinion is just noise in the face of Cook preventing science from doing replication.

Let us know when you’ve got that taken care of. – Anthony”

Yawn. Can’t be bothered to see if anyone else has picked this up so I will anyway. There is nothing to stop you, Anthony, me, Margaret or anyone else replicating it. You don’t need Cook’s data. You do your own sample from the same databases of papers he used. It’s that simple. Surprised no one has done it. On second thoughts, since the result is pretty likely to be more or less the same, I think I know why no one else has done it.

And for RustNeverSleeps, Richard Tol is showing us that it’s better to burn out than to fade away.

You covered just about everything in your summary, but left out the Bjorn Lomborg view:
15 Even if the conclusions were correct, and human emissions WERE a significant contributer to AGW, the costs of cutting back on CO2 far outweigh the benefits- it’s cheaper to adapt to a slightly warming climate.

You covered just about everything in your summary, but left out the Bjorn Lomborg view:
15 Even if the conclusions were correct, and human emissions WERE a significant contributer to AGW, the costs of cutting back on CO2 far outweigh the benefits- it’s cheaper to adapt to a slightly warming climate.

How is adapting to x meters of sea level rise (where x is a reasonably large number) going to be cheaper than preventing/delaying said sea level rise?

Your erroneously suggesting that all papers on climate change irregardless of cause should be counted as FOR man made climate change. Thats just wrong.

I have never suggested anything of the sort. You’d know this if instead of saying:

Also if your going to talk questionable go back and scrutinize the cook paper.

You tried seeing what I’ve said about this paper. I’m one of the most vocal critics of this paper. I was even the first person to discover the tricks Cook et al played with definitions for their paper. When the paper was newer, I accused them of laundering lies in order to exaggerate their results. More recently, I said this regarding their response to Richard Tol:

Of the 3,896 [abstracts] they rated as “Endorse AGW,” they only rated 64 as endorsing the notion “most of the recent global warming is man-made.” The other 3,832 did not. John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli and the rest all know this, but they still published a paper which claimed 3,896 abstracts were rated as saying “most of the recent global warming is man-made.” In other words, they lied.

I’m fine with criticism, but it’s ridiculous when one of the most vocal critics of a paper can be painted as a supporter of the paper simply because he points out issues with some of the criticisms of that paper.

Here’s a hint. People on the same “side” can disagree on individual points.

Brandon, since Google has spidered most of thread.php links that are belatedly password protected, isn’t it possible to find something in google cache, or waybackmachine that has already archived, that is what they belatedly don’t want anyone to see?

Dr. Tol apparently says:
“It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration. During that time, electoral fortunes will turn. Climate policy will not succeed unless it has broad societal support, at levels comparable to other public policies such as universal education or old-age support.”

But: Water vapor is responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which is vital to keep the world warm (15C instead of -18C). The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contribute only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.
Carbon dioxide as a result of man’s activities is only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. By far the greatest source of manmade CO2 is cement manufacture, and by far the greatest contributor is China.

Therefore, there is no point whatsoever in the USA devoting a dollar of expenditure or an atom of energy in reducing its CO2 emissions to zero. In fact, there is no reason for anyone in the world to do so.

Tol’s conclusion: “There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct.”

Right, well Im glad we’ve got that sorted out. Let’s get on with fixing it then.

I can’t ‘rate’ Tol’s paper because I only have the Abstract and Conclusions. It was stupid for the research of Cook et al (2013) to be based just on rating papers by their abstracts. I won’t emulate Cook’s stupidity by rating Tol’s paper now. I’ll rate it only if I have access to the full paper.

You have to admire the Siberian Hussey and her pal Rusty Bed-springs for being bold enough to comment here. I wonder if they have also visited SS and advised John Cook to release his data, code and the method by which he achieved his 97% Consensus figure?

If you can’t even spell Cook’s name right, your opinion means nothing. It’s just internet noise.

========================

Margaret Hardman says:

You do your own sample from the same databases of papers he used. It’s that simple.

Wrong as usual, Margaret. The database is only a part of it. There is also Cook’s methodology and other metadata. But Cook hides those, and the reason is clear: if he released everything, his nonsense would be debunked in short order.

Tol is finding out what happens to those that dare stray form the true path of righteousness, even if by only one inch , the attack dogs of the dogma will be straight unto you to pull you back into line asap , even if those dogs are rather old and toothless and not a little mad. How is this science by any stretch of the imagination?

It’s not science, it is merely assertion.

============================

rustneversleeps says:

Gee, I hope someone is archiving this post so it doesn’t quietly disappear!

You keep posting that, and similar comments. No doubt you are a newbie here.

Let me explain something: climate alarmist blogs do what you’re so worried about. Here, veracity is sifted from nonsense in these threads. WUWT doesn’t censor, like SkS, realclimate, tamino, and most of the others do. If WUWT censored, or made posts disappear, no one would be reading your comments. Does that make sense to you?

Let me explain one other fact to you. Aside from all the angst over Dr. Tol’s article by the swivel-eyed alarmist contingent, there is a bigger picture: Planet Earth is deconstructing everything the alarmists believe. Everything. Arctic ice is not disappearing. The ocean is not “acidifying”. Methane is not a problem. Sea level rise is not accelerating. And global warming stopped more than seventeen years ago.

Those are all verifiable facts. Moreover, every alarmist prediction made has failed. Every one of them. Reasonable people will look at that track recored of 100.0% failed predictions, and conclude that the climate alarmist clique does not understand anything about the planet’s climate.

They listened to Al Gore and watched his pseudo-science movie, and they became True Believers. Like you.

Another interesting thing happened along the way. The alarmist crowd’s heroes like Mann, Trenberth, Cook, Schmidt, and the rest, all refuse to debate in any fair, moderated venue. They used to debate. But after losing every debate, now they tuck tail and run. Why would someone hide out from debating if they truly believed what they say? The fact is, they don’t believe it. You do. But they don’t, as they candidly admitted in the Climategate email dump.

You are betting on a losing horse. There is no global warming; it stopped. None of the other scares have happened, either. The alarmist crowd has been flat wrong about everything.

CO2 is completely harmless. No global harm due to rising CO2 has ever been identified. CO2 is harmless. Further, CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere. More is better, at both current and projected concentrations. The planet is measurably GREENING, due directly to the rise in CO2.

The “carbon” scare has colonized your mind, just like it has for lots of folks. You are the victim of a relentless media campaign, with the goal of immense carbon taxes. But the public is coming around, for one reason: they see that exactly none of the wild-eyed predictions have come to pass. If you were resonable and rational, you would be a skeptic, too. Instead, global warming/climate change is your new religion. And religious acolytes never condone one of their own straying from their dogma. So you’re busy demonizing Dr Tol with endless ad hominem attacks — which is all you have. You certainly lack any scientific basis for your beliefs.

Some day I might educate you about the climate null hypothesis. But you will have to earn it with reasoned scientific debate over the [non-existent] scientific evidence for runaway global warming. Personally, I don’t think you’re up to the challenge.

Jim Hunt.
So let’s get this straight…we’ve got UQ issuing legal threats against persons in possession of data that is already in the public domain because…?
We’ve got a Warmist scientist Richard Tol saying that even on the basis of that same information that 97% is ‘bollocks’.
We’ve even got leaked emails between the ‘subjects/judges’ in the experiment discussing how they played guitar and rode exercise bikes as they knocked off a few more papers!
But to allay our natural anxieties you direct us to a guy who keeps photoshopped images of himself in Nazi uniform on his website laying his version of ‘the facts’ out before us.
Has it ever occurred to you that if one were to survey the participants of the General Synod of the Church of England, one might well find that 97% of them believed in God?

No Charles, I’m not “directing you to a guy”. Did you check the link? There appears to be details of all the papers that were rated, and the ratings they were given. If you so desire you can DYOR and come to your own conclusions. However I suspect “fatigue” might set in before you finish the task!

CO2 is as harmless as H2O. Going from 3 parts in 10,000 to 4 parts in 10,000 doesn’t make any difference. Global warming stopped a long time ago. If CO2 mattered, the planet would be warming. It isn’t.

Aphan (June 5, 2014 at 11:03 am) “Every so often I get this prickly feeling on the back of my neck and the hunch that we are ALL being used as observational RATS in one of his and Lewd’s social experiments, and that they use our reactions to produce their next round of unabashed, shiney, propaganda marketing widgets.”

Nope. Their widgets are mostly aimed at the “uneducated”. It’s working too.

Thanks @Poptech. As you say “Slightly off topic” but nonetheless fascinating!

Do you suppose the interview reveals Prof. Tol’s underlying reasons for engaging in the current “cat fight” with Cook et al.?

“The environmental movement, and the academics who work on climate change as well, have gotten into this mode of telling ever scarier stories in the hope of waking people up and seeing the need for greenhouse gas emission reductions. It hasn’t worked for 20 years, and I don’t see why it would work this time. If you look at what emissions have done over the past twenty years, they’ve gone up rather than down!”

Thank you for the thorough debunking of this infamous Cook paper. To criticize the ‘methodology’ of such a farrago of half-baked ‘research’ is a public service, saving the rest of us from having to bother. Clearly it is just a self-serving pile of manufactured claims pretending to be a scholarly ‘study’—there is no method, except contrivances for deceit.

I have been alternately reading and skimming these WUWT threads on Cook and his defenders for some time now, wondering what all the fuss was about. The paper is obviously a transparent attempt to come up with an impressive-sounding number to defend the mythological ‘consensus’ about anthropological ‘global warming’. So I guess we should be concerned because the ‘97%’ number gets bandied about by politicians and the useful idiots in the press. But it seems to me it would be better left ignored. Just point out that the ‘study’ was a fraud, an exercise in making stuff up. Snake-oil salesmen make stuff up all the time. “More doctors smoke _____ than any other cigarette.” “In ____ years ____ % of all species will be extinct.” So do the Climatists make stuff up, a lot of stuff.

In point of fact, camp followers of the Climatist dogma will accept any ‘consensus’ number that appears to validate their beliefs. And they will only stop accepting it when they die or experience a crisis of confidence in the inherent ‘rightness’ of their cause. They will not listen to critiques of ‘the obvious’.

The place to undermine the Climatists is in the schools. Challenge the curricula that promotes climate Alarmism. Turn the argument that demonizes CO2 on its head, pointing out that it is a wonderful, beneficial gas, without which all life on Earth would perish, that it is nothing to fear, and cannot change the climate. The paleo-climatic facts are well known, and if they were taught, they would give the lie to the Climatists and all the fatuous claims about the snake-oil ‘97%’.

“Consensus” is not a term that should ever apply to science. Consensus is a political concept, not a scientific one. Science is based upon evidence, not consensus. The problem for the AGW community is that the evidence does not support their hypothesis. So they must instead employ “consensus” measures that include ridicule and public pressure against those who challenge their assertions.